


wisps

by Spineless



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, First Crush, Recreational Drug Use, lifehack: smoke out your crush, not a crackfic, teens smoking weed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 00:32:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15425073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spineless/pseuds/Spineless
Summary: Paninya introduces Winry to the common Rush Valley pastime of smoking weed. Winry realizes she really wants Paninya to kiss her.





	wisps

**Author's Note:**

> T for language & recreational drug use
> 
> I really like this pairing, I wish there was more content for it! Oh well, write the fic you want to read.

“You’ve never smoked before?”

Paninya’s eyes are wide and searching, but hold no judgement, only curiosity and maybe a touch of surprise. Winry looks down at the carefully rolled paper cylinder her friend holds poised between two fingers and shakes her head. 

“Why not?” Paninya pats her hips, looking for her lighter. It’s in her left back pocket. Winry noticed the rectangular shape sticking out when they climbed up the steep stairs to Garfiel’s roof. 

“No reason to, I suppose. Or opportunity.” 

Most people in Resembool drink to pass the time. She knows that’s how Granny came to know Ed and Al’s dad, before the war. She remembers a sleepover with some of the girls from school, before she started full time as Granny’s apprentice, right after Ed got his State certification. One of them smuggled in a bottle. They had all sat in a circle on the floor of Marie’s bedroom and passed it around, taking sips before making faces of disgust and sputtering. Winry took one whiff and wanted to refuse––it smelled exactly like the alcohol used in surgery. But at the urging of her classmates, she took a sip. It burned like fire all the way down. 

She’s not naïve. She’s known that plenty of automail bearers smoke to help with the pain. The market and square often reek with the scent, telltale clouds of smoke hovering over the crowds. Winry wouldn’t ever admit it, but sometimes it kind of smelled like the skunks they had out in the country. But she doesn’t have automail, so there’s no obvious reason to smoke. 

She wonders if Ed––but no, he wouldn’t. If he did, she would know. 

“Do you want to?” Paninya leans her head back against the wall that encloses the stairs and pulls her knees up. The two of them sit in the perfect dead spot against the wind. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. I just figured I’d offer.” She shrugs one shoulder and Winry can’t help but think how cool and nonchalant she always looks. 

“Well… what’s it like?” If it feels like being drunk, she may have to pass. She’s been drunk before, just a couple of times, at Resembool’s Annual Spring Sheep Festival. All of her old classmates had seemed to have been having so much fun––they were all so loose and close and causal, laughing and throwing arms around each other, sharing bottles and glasses. It always starts the same, fun and light and a little bit dizzying, but then inevitably the dizziness increases and people lean in closer and closer and then it’s just not fun anymore. Especially since everyone is so much better friends with each other. 

But she’s not in Resembool anymore––she’s in _Rush Valley_ , the place she’s dreamt about ever since she was a kid, and here she doesn’t have to deal with forced kindness or pity from the village kids and their offered bottles and their gossip. She’s in a whole different world. Really, she’s a whole different person from the girl who drank too much moonshine last May. 

Paninya tilts her head slightly and frowns as she thinks, her brows slightly furrowed. “It’s like… hm. Kind of hard to explain. Everything gets softer and… farther away, but brighter? Like sensations, and thoughts. Sometimes you forget why you were doing something, or you mix things up. But in a good way. It’s relaxing.” She offers a slight smile and glances down. She brought an old blanket for them to sit on and notices a hole near the edge. “Sorry if I’m not making any sense. Anyway, forget I asked, we don’t have to.”

“Is it like being drunk?” The description didn’t sound like it, but she wanted to be sure. 

A look of distaste crosses Paninya’s face and she shakes her head. “God no.” 

Winry takes a moment to consider the marijuana cigarette and the holey blanket and the fact that their nook up here on the roof is really quite nice, almost cozy, even. They’re up high enough to get a good view of the town but not enough to draw attention to themselves. When the sun breaks through the clouds, its rays warm her face. “Well then, I wanna try.” 

Paninya blinks hard. “Oh. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I trust you.”

“Okay. Let me know if you’re not okay, okay?”

Winry smiles, halfway to a grin. “Okay!” 

Paninya looks at her, then immediately down at the blanket, then back at her. She smiles too, the gradual upturn of her lips transforming her face and Winry’s aware of her heart speeding up. 

She watches as Paninya holds the joint between her lips and flicks open her lighter, bringing the tiny flickering flame to the end until it catches. She watches her friend inhale deeply, chest rising, and she watches as smoke streams from her nose and mouth. 

“It’s like you’re breathing through a straw. You’ll probably cough, but everyone does their first time.” She holds out the joint. Winry takes it with two careful fingers. 

She holds it to her lips like she just saw, and breathes like she’s breathing through a straw. Smoke floods her lungs and catches in her windpipe. Her eyes widen and she coughs heavily into her other hand. Paninya deftly takes the joint back before it can fall onto the blanket and then rubs her back in firm circles. When her coughing subsides, Winry is slightly dizzy, but she’s unsure if that’s from the weed or lack of oxygen. 

“I forgot water, sorry.” Paninya takes another hit with practiced ease. “You okay?”

“I said I’d tell you if I wasn’t.” She holds out her hand. The joint is passed with a wicked grin.

The next hit Winry takes is a little easier, she doesn’t cough as much, the third one even easier, and the fourth one even easier than that. She watches the cloud of smoke hang lazily in the air above them like it’s got no place to be before it’s dispersed gradually by the breeze. She imagines that it, and all the other clouds of smoke generated by the weed smokers of Rush Valley, coalesced and formed the cloud coverage currently marring the otherwise delightful day. It’s an interesting thought, and that’s when she realizes––

“ _Oh_.” So _this_ is what being high is like.

“You feeling it?” Paninya’s face looms close and she’s staring at her intently. Winry wonders when they got so close; she can nearly count her eyelashes. They’re dark and thick, like her eyebrows and the hair she ties back. They’re close enough that she realizes that her brown eyes aren’t all one color. They’re dark along the edge and lighter in the center. Winry wonders how she never noticed before. “You’re okay, yeah?”

“ _Yeah_. Yeah.”

Paninya gets even closer and then she’s grinning, laughing. “Oh my _god_.” 

Her heart rate picks up again. “What? What is it?” 

“Winry, your eyes are, like, _so_ red.” 

“Oh.” That’s surprising. She blinks them a few times. “I thought they were blue.” 

Paninya throws back her head and laughs and laughs. “You _are_ high!”

Winry can’t help but giggle. “I guess I am.” 

Her head feels heavy in a way that makes her want to drop it against her friend’s bare shoulder. She doesn’t feel like how she does when she’s had too much to drink _at all_. Paninya was right, everything is softer around the edges, but some things stick out. She strokes the blanket over and over with her palm, taking the time to notice how its roughly woven strands catch against her callouses. She focuses on how their shoulders are touching, the skin of their upper arms pressed against each other. She thinks about how the only person she’s ever really been this close to, physically, is Edward, and that’s really only to fix her automail. This closeness isn’t like that at all; it’s natural, like of course they’d be sitting this close, like they’ve always been sitting this close. 

Paninya takes one more hit and stubs the joint out carefully against the concrete ground. They’ve only smoked about half, so she pockets the rest, perhaps for later. “Yeah. I don’t smoke as much as some folks around here, but it really does help with all the,” she gestures at her legs stretched out in front of her, “that stuff. Dominic doesn’t really approve though, he says it muddles the mind.”

“Maybe it’s okay for your mind to be muddled every once in a while.” 

“See, that’s what _I_ say! He just makes the automail, so it’s different for him.”

“He’s a total grandpa.” Winry wonders what her Granny would think––then she realizes, she doesn’t have to wonder: when she first called her up to tell her she’d be staying in Rush Valley as an apprentice, Granny had made sure to say, “Don’t let them turn you into a pothead!”

Oops. Sorry Granny. But also, one joint does not a pothead make. Or something.

“He’s an _actual_ grandpa.” 

“I know, that’s what I said. I was there.”

“I know you were there, I was there too!”

“Mm, were you, though? I think I remember something about you being sick on the floor from the sight of blood.” How is it that they _keep_ getting closer? Any closer and they’d be in each others’ laps. 

Winry doesn’t think that would be all that bad. 

“Ooh, _harsh_.”

They both laugh again, although she’s not entirely sure what’s funny. Laughing is good though, it feels good and it sounds good, and when Paninya laughs her eyes crinkle. 

She moves, half guided, half not, and lies down with her face to the sky and her back against the blanket. It doesn’t really do much to cushion the ground at all, but it is much better than lying on the bare cement. After a moment, Paninya slides down next to her. Their elbows brush as they watch the sky. Winry likes it when bits of blue peer out from between the wispy clouds. She tries to find shapes in the blue like she and Ed and Al would try to find shapes in the fluffy clouds in Resembool, but they’re too fleeting, covered too soon. She wonders if it’ll rain later. 

“Hey, Winry?” 

She tears her gaze from the sky and brings it back to Paninya. Their noses are almost brushing. “Yeah?”

“I just wanted to say. I’m really glad you decided to stay in Rush Valley.”

Warmth floods Winry’s face and body. She has a thought, not like a lightbulb going off, but more like the sun rising: she wants Paninya to kiss her. Or maybe she wants to kiss Paninya. She knows then, laying there on the roof, that she would feel this way weed or no weed, high or sober, but it’s like being high has illuminated it, brought her attention to the feeling. A culmination of moments. She takes a breath and moves her hand so her little finger curls around Paninya’s pinky

“Yeah. Me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> shameless plug BUT my fma tumblr is 420fullmetal.tumblr.com 
> 
> thanks for reading!!! :o)


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